Our first day in Isalo National Park was a pretty exhausting experience. Despite rising relatively early for us, we arrived at breakfast to find that almost every table had been used and vacated; it seems as though we missed a trick here, as those “in the know” had left early to catch the lemurs, which would probably be long gone by the time we’d caught up.

We met with our driver after breakfast, and after driving for about 15 minutes we arrived in the nearby town of Ranohira, passing some rugged but beautiful countryside along the way. We picked up our local guide here, who cleverly suggested that we did a different (but longer) trek today, avoiding the rabble that had gone before us and putting us in a better position for spotting lemurs tomorrow. Packing some bread and cheese from the local market, we headed off into the park.

After leaving our driver at the gates, we started walking; initially, the terrain was fairly easy going and although the weather was unusually hot, it wasn’t taxing. The pathways were dry and dusty, and with only the odd snake or lizard, to keep us occupied along the way.

We were walking for about an hour before we arrived at what our guide referred to as the “swimming pool” -  a natural freshwater basin that’s fed by the nearby river. Naturally, anything that’s described in the guides as a place where you can get your clothes off and jump in is going to attract tourists by the dozen, and this is where we caught up with the early risers. Not wanting to share a natural bathing phenomenon with a bunch of strangers, we soon left them behind.

It didn’t take long for the terrain getting progressively more difficult, and before we knew it we were traversing some quite difficult a rugged ground. We carried on for about 4.5km before we made it to one of the park’s camp sites. We stopped here to rest, gratefully consuming the bread and cheese we bought earlier at the market and cooling off under cover of the trees.

It wasn’t long before we were on our way again, but our waning enthusiasm was soon recharged by the sight of the local ringtail lemur population; wild but definitely not timid, we were able to get at least six feet away from them as they danced from tree to tree.

We topped our hike off with a visit to a waterfall, which was just what the doctor ordered after nearly 8km of walking; the water was cool, and there was plenty of shade to relax and places to sit and bathe your feet.

Thankfully, it was only a 30 minute walk back to the park entrance; our driver took us back to the hotel, where we went straight to the bar for a well deserved Coke.

We spent the rest of our day leisurely exploring the surrounding area on horseback; a surreal experience, as the cactus-laden desert scenery made it feel more like a saunter through the US wild west…